Bin the headsets. Abandon the hand signals. The greatest innovation in the Premier League this season has not been technological - it is hardly even tactical. It's a throw-in. A chuck!

And suddenly every team in the top flight is scared of newly promoted Stoke City. Scared of Rory Delap, and his catapult arms.

He does not boast the longest throw-in in football: it averages 38 metres, while veteran Welsh defender Andy Legg can manage seven more. Delap's is simply the deadliest. Ask Aston Villa, losers to a last-minute nod-in from a Delap throw in August. Ask Arsenal, twice 'Delapped' in a 2-1 defeat in early November. How does he do it?

'I don't go into the technicals, I just pick it up and throw,' the 32-year-old tells OSM. 'It'd need someone cleverer than me to work out what's going on there.' Here goes: he delivers the ball at a flatter angle than most throwers, increasing its speed, and with more backspin, straightening the flight. 'I've always been able to do it,' says Delap, who has been lucratively long-throwing for a decade during stints at Derby, Southampton and Sunderland. Yet this season is different: Stoke manager Tony Pulis has harnessed this strange, mutant hurl for maximum benefit, and Delap is responsible for more than half of Stoke's top-flight goals.

'He's like a human sling,' said David Moyes, after his Everton side conceded two Delap-assisted goals in September. But the gags mask a nervousness: 'People are worried to death before he even throws it,' says Pulis; 'Probably because it's been hyped up so much,' Delap responds. Teams are scrambling to compensate. Wigan and Manchester City had fewer defenders in the penalty area, to give the goalkeeper more room to manoeuvre. Liverpool simply stopped kicking the ball out in their half.

And this marks Delap's throw as a great innovation - it demands further innovation in reply. There is the Cruyff Turn - in future, could we be talking of the Delap Throw? 'That'd be nice,' says The Sling himself. 'Might be the only chance I get to hear my name in a few years.'